Sophie Louise Roberts

As a family, we moved out to Goose Green, Falkland Islands, in July 2024.

My main role was to support the opening of the communities new farm cafe and self catering which provides farm workers, shearers, tourists and residence alike with a locally produced fulfilling menu and accommodation.

Aside from everyday customer service, I have a small team where I am responsible for their well-being within work and I also take an active role in everything to do with advertising, bringing new ideas, basic accounts and ensure high standards are met at all times.

The cafe is set on one of the largest sheep farms in the Falkland Islands, where I enjoy getting involved with the shepherding side of life here too. High organisational skills, logistics and marketing have been essential within this role due to the isolation of the island.

I have worked for Colin Ottery for the last 5 years with supporting him through his alpaca shearing season with office admin. I mainly correspond with his customers ensuring correct information is collected and getting customers booked in with a shearing date.

Colin has recently been holding alpaca searing courses in the UK and Norway, and I have developed and designed his course booklets and additional health and safety documents he has needed.

Farming alongside my Husband, we successfully ran Robertsacre Farm. Farming IRO 180 acres on Dartmoor, we ran a low input grass fed sheep and beef enterprise and had previously also reared chickens, goats and pigs for the meat market or for our own farm meat boxes. Daily, I shared the runnings of stock management, husbandry and office admin.

We diversified into running two holiday cottages from the farm in 2021 where I inputted design, marketing and social media coverage which resulted into a successful launch and subsequent business. we employed 2 local workers to work along side me with the turnovers and cleaning. I also cooked and provided accommodation for any seasonal workers we had on the farm through out the year.

The farm went on the market in 2024.

During my time working with H Dawsons, I was responsible for communicating and looking after around 650 farmers based in England and Wales.

This was a work from home, self employed role.

I was later involved in the set up of the first RWS audit framework to be enrolled in the Northern Hemisphere (UK) working alongside Textile Exchange. This role then took me all over England, Scotland and Wales conducting the first 25 audits on farm for the H Dawson farm group alongside 2 other colleagues.

I gained experience using Sage accounting software during this role, invoicing programs as well as organising logistics for haulage across the UK.

During the 17/18 shearing season at Rewa, I was working alongside 1 other cook looking after 30-35 shearers, pressers and rousies. A mix of local and international workers, with different requirements needing to be met. Breakfast, lunch and dinners were prepared from scratch and provided 6 days a week along with cleaning down the kitchen, cold stores and larder after each service. I helped to plan meals, organise shopping lists, collect groceries and cleaning the bathrooms and social rooms/bar at the quarters.

Once I had finished my studies at college, a job was offered to me at an equine rehabilitation yard. The yard dealt directly with the RSPCA where we had a whole range of horses come into us due to welfare reasons. We would have around 5 horses assigned to us at a time, and I learned alot working along side the vets and those specific horses to ensure they were receiving the best treatment and quality of life they could. I was fortunate enough to bring some of these horses back into ridden work, and see them off to new homes.